Tony Leung celebrated his 50th birthday at home yesterday surrounded by a group of close friends. His wife Carina Lau, who is rarely in Hong Kong, specially took time to make arrangements for Tony's big day. Carina also uploaded a childhood photo of Tony near midnight. "Without any words, there's such gentleness...Happy Birthday". In the photo, Tony's eyes are cast down. Even though his eyes don't show their intensity, his appearance hasn't changed much over the years. His face is equally as charming now as it was when he was younger. In the past years, Tony has had the habit of uploading a photo of him cutting his cake. However, there hasn't been any new photos as of yet.

As for Tony's good friend Kenny Bee, he wrote his well wishes for the birthday boy through his Weibo. "Without meeting often and without so many words, Cancers seem to possess great understanding. I feel like I have deep connections with them, especially this one person. Happy Birthday Tony Leung!"

On Christmas Eve back in 1991, Carina Lau (劉嘉玲) held a costume party at her home – she dressed up as Joker from the Batman movies, her boyfriend at the time Tony Leung (梁朝偉) dressed up as Michael J. Fox’s character Marty McFly from the Back to the Future franchise, Sandra Ng (吳君如) dressed up as Veronica Yip (葉玉卿), etc…..those were the days of being wild….

In the blink of an eye, Tony has already reached the half century mark. To celebrate the milestone, his wife Carina once again hosted a party at their home, except this time, the guests didn’t have to ‘dress up’. Instead, the guests -- which included long-time friends such as Brigitte Lin (林青霞), Jacky Cheung (張學友), May Lo (羅美薇), Kenny Bee (鍾鎮濤), Lui Fong (呂方), Alex To (杜德偉), Cecilia Yip (葉童), etc. – engaged in light conversation and singing, with laughter interspersed throughout. As Carina herself states: “It was a very warm party. When we were young, of course the thought was to experience everything possible, but now that we have all matured, we understand how to enjoy a different phase in life.”

Carina personally takes the helm and describes for us the ‘superstar birthday party’ that she had arranged for Tony.

June 27th was Tony Leung’s 50th birthday. His good friends John Shum (岑建勳), Nansun Shi (施南生), Derek Yee (爾冬陞), etc. had already stated early on that they wanted to celebrate the special occasion with him, however the shy birthday boy shook his head and politely declined their offer with a valid ‘excuse’ – on that day, he would be in Kaiping [China] re-doing some scenes for his upcoming movie The Grandmaster《一代宗師》. Carina smiled and recounted: “Nansun [Shi] had suggested visiting Tony on the set in Kaiping and celebrating there, however the environment over there was not ideal , as the set was very small and narrow – besides, Tony wouldn’t have time to take care of everyone. When this was relayed to Nansun, she still insisted that even if the production team won’t relieve him, everyone will still go celebrate with him!”

Tony Leung Kar Fai overslept

Unexpectedly, The Grandmaster’s director Wong Kar Wai (王家衛) announced last minute that Tony would be relieved from filming that day. Once she found out that Tony would remain in HK for his birthday, Carina immediately called a few of their closest friends, all of whom agreed right away to attend: “Since it was so last minute, I was only planning to invite about 10 friends or so, but in the end, more than 20 people came. Many friends, such as Jacky [Cheung] for example, said that if we were to throw a party, he would definitely come, even if he has to rearrange his schedule to do so. The biggest surprise was May May [Jacky’s wife May Lo] – she normally wouldn’t attend, but after putting her daughters to bed, even though it was already very late in the night, she still came – truly very grateful to her!” Regrettably, the couple’s other good friend Tony Leung Kar Fai (梁家輝) wasn’t able to attend – Carina explains: “His wife called to tell me that he had caught a cold and after taking some medicine, he slept past the time. If it was back in the old days when we were all young and playful, I would have told her to awaken him, but now, it’s best to let him have his rest.”

In a rare ‘reunion’ of sorts, several members of the cast from the 1993 comedy The Eagle Shooting Heroes《東成西就》were present at the party: even though the ‘Southern Emperor’ (Tony Leung Kar Fai) was not able to attend the party for the ‘Western Venom’ (Tony Leung Chiu Wai) due to illness, luckily there was still the ‘Northern Beggar’ (Jacky Cheung), ‘Third Princess’ (Brigitte Lin), ‘Wang Chong Yang’ (Kenny Bee), and ‘Zhou Bak Tong’ (Carina Lau) to represent the ‘Condor Heroes’ group.

Carina expressed: “We didn’t really arrange any special program for the night – it was pretty much everyone sitting around chit-chatting. With everyone usually so busy with their own lives and careers, we thought that perhaps chatting a little here and there on Weibo would be sufficient, but actually it’s better to get together every once in awhile.”

‘Forced’ to reveal his birthday wish

At the party, when Jacky Cheung and Kenny Bee saw that Tony had a nice guitar in the room, their ‘occupational disease’ broke out and they started an impromptu singing ‘marathon’ of various Chinese and English classic songs. Even Tony himself, who usually is not willing to open his ‘golden mouth’ to sing, could not help being ‘infected’ by the ‘song bug’ – when the group sang one of his own classic hits “In the hazy rainy night” 《朦朧夜雨裡》, he sang right along with them. Carina expressed: “Even though Mr. Leung (Tony) is not very ‘professional’ at it, he does play the guitar occasionally when he is at home – whether it’s folk songs or rock songs, he’s quite entertaining.” Amidst their joyous celebration, the group also took the time to remember another one of their good friends – the ‘Eastern Heretic’ Leslie Cheung (張國榮) – together, the group sang the song that Leslie had used back when he participated in the ‘Asia Singing Contest’ in 1977, which also happened to be one of his favorite English songs:《American Pie》.

The ‘highlight’ of the night occurred when it came time for Tony to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. Recalling that moment, Carina could not help but laugh heartily: “Seeing how small the birthday cake was, you can tell I wasn’t expecting that more than 20 people would come. But none of them seemed to mind, as everyone was satisfied with having a small ‘taste’ – maybe they all wanted to keep fit!” Prior to cutting the cake, the birthday boy had to go through the traditional ‘ritual’ of making a birthday wish. As all the guests took out their cameras and cell phones and pointed them at him, hoping to capture the moment, a cute expression of ‘misery’ crept onto Tony’s face – he was silent for a moment, then groaned: “Why do you guys have to ‘force’ me to say it [his birthday wish]?” Jacky playfully suggested: “How about if we wrote the script for you?” while Brigitte teased: “Just pretend you’re acting – how about if we put a camera in front of you, would that be better?” In the end, it was Carina that knew Tony the best: “When everyone’s attention is focused on him, he feels very uncomfortable.” Therefore, she helped her hubby ‘resolve’ the matter by saying: “Tony’s birthday wish is for everyone to be healthy!”